Interpretive Summary: The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) 2010 provide recommendations on how much to eat from the USDA Food Patterns (FP) components including Fruit, Vegetables, Grains, Dairy, Protein Foods, and Oils and place limits on Alcoholic Beverages, Added Sugars, and Solid Fats consumption. To evaluate how well Americans adhere to the DGA recommendations, it is necessary to convert the foods reported in the What We Eat in America, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (WWEIA, NHANES) 2007-08 to appropriate FP components. The Food Patterns Equivalents Database (FPED) 2007-08 has been developed to serve this purpose. The FPED converts the 8,076 FNDDS 4.1 foods and beverages to the respective number of cup equivalents of Fruit, Vegetables, and Dairy; ounce equivalents of Grains and Protein Foods; number of alcoholic drinks for Alcoholic Beverages; teaspoon equivalents of Added Sugars; and gram equivalents of Solid Fats and Oils. The Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies 4.1 foods and beverages are made of various combinations of 2,852 unique ingredients, and a Food Patterns Equivalents Ingredients Database (FPID) has been created for these ingredients. The Methodology and User Guide describes FPED development process in detail with algorithms and computational examples. In addition to FPED and FPID, the release includes the amounts of 37 FP components reported consumed by each of the respondents on day 1 and 2 of WWEIA, NHANES 2007-08 and a SAS codes file for the estimation of mean intakes of FP components on day 1 by 21 age-gender groups. The FPED and FPID have the potential to link nutrition, agriculture, and economics and are useful to researchers, nutritionists, economists, food growers, food producers, nutrition educators, and policymakers.

Technical Abstract:
The purpose of developing the Food Patterns Equivalents Database (FPED) 2007-08 is to convert the 8,076 foods and beverages in the Food and Nutrients Database for Dietary Studies (FNDDS) 4.1 used for the What We Eat in America, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (WWEIA, NHANES) 2007-08 to USDA Food Patterns (FP) components. The FNDDS 4.1 foods are made of various combinations of 2,852 unique ingredients, and a Food Patterns Equivalents Ingredients Database (FPID) has been created for these ingredients. The main FP components include: Fruit, Vegetables, Grains, Dairy, Protein Foods, Added Sugars, Oils, Solid Fats, and Alcoholic Drinks. Many of the main FP components are further subdivided so as to increase the application of FPED and to facilitate in-depth data analyses. As a result, there are 37 FP components in FPED. Fruit, Vegetables, and Dairy are computed in cup equivalents; Grains and Protein Foods in ounce equivalents; Alcoholic Beverages in number of drinks; Added Sugars in teaspoon equivalents; and, Oils and Solid Fats in gram equivalents. FNDDS 4.1 foods and beverages are disaggregated to ingredients that can be directly assigned to one of the FP components. The FP components are then computed for the ingredients. The amounts of each of the 37 FP components present per 100 grams of each FNDDS foods are computed by adding the FP components present in the ingredients. The FPED release includes: The Methodology and User Guide describing the guiding principles and process of FPED development with algorithms and computational examples; an FPED containing 37 FP components present per 100 grams of FNDDS 4.1 foods and beverages and an FPID for the 2,852 ingredients in MS Access and SAS; the amounts of FP components reported consumed by each of the survey respondents on days 1 and 2 of WWEIA, NHANES 2007-08, and a SAS codes file for the estimation of mean intakes of FP components by 21 age-gender groups on day 1.